The cabin
by planet p
Summary: AU; Margaret runs into someone unexpected and they have a talk.
1. Chapter 1

**The cabin** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

The cold was sharp and brittle; the sort of cold that hurt inside a person's bones. A sad person might go walking in this sort of weather, or a guilty one looking for something to affirm (or punish) their guilt.

Margaret just needed to feel the air; to feel that she, like it, was still alive. She left Harmony and Emily asleep at the kitchenette table – in the cabin they'd rented – and stepped outside into the chilly winter weather. She could feel a little sad seeing Emily and Harmony together, seeing her daughter interacting with her best friend as though she, instead, was her mother. She knew she'd hurt Emily; she'd known she would from the start, even before she'd made those hurtful decisions, but she'd had no other choice, not in reality.

Emily understood this, she knew, she'd come to understand it over the years, but it hadn't brought back that closeness, that closeness that every child felt with their parents for no other reason that for that they were just that, their parents. Until they were hurt, like she'd hurt Emily.

Harmony hadn't hurt Emily like that, she'd stayed constant throughout: a true friend. Sometimes, Margaret grew frightened that there were great secrets between them, that there were things that Harmony knew about Emily that she'd never know, and though she told herself that it was Emily's choice whom she confided in, she was afraid that she'd miss out on the good things she'd want to know about her daughter if she knew them to want to know them – the little things that would make her feel closer to the woman as a mother, as well as a person, and another living being.

Outside, the cold quickly slipped between the threads of the fabric of her clothes and wove itself into her skin and she found that she very much wanted to shiver. She hadn't been walking long at all, and found herself, now, only at the front office, walking beside the drive, and sidestepped an old aluminium soft drink can that lay in the depression to the side of the drive that might have been referred after as the 'gutter' in the park's management plan.

Margaret had mulled over the same thing often, of apologising, of trying to explain why she'd done what she had, but Emily already knew why, and she had accepted that – it would only be hurting her all over again to bring it up, and it would only be for her benefit, certainly not for her daughter's. She supposed she had questions – so many questions – but her action then, it seemed, had acted to take away any right that she might have had to ask such questions. It wasn't that the right – or the need – had been physically been taken away, but it was her guilt that she knew which had snatched the courage – or heartlessness – from her to raise those questions. She had no idea if Harmony had the answers she did not, but, at the same time that she felt cheated at the thought that she did, she also felt frightened that she didn't – that _no-one_ did!

She reached the exit from the park onto the road and found suddenly, that she didn't want to go any farther; she had no appetite for a long walk along some street that was a complete stranger to her. So she turned back.

As she walked, her eyes began to water, but she knew that it was more than just the cold, it was the thought – the thought of sending her grandchild, her grand_son_, away; of snatching him from her daughter just like her own sons had been snatched from her – that really hurt her. With the little boy, she might have had a chance to get to know what it felt like to be close to someone like her sons. But all that had been ruined when she'd had him sent away before her daughter had woken and even had the chance to hold him! Suddenly, her tears loomed large in her eyes, and she brushed them away with frantic hands. She felt horrible – no better than the people who'd stolen her sons from her!

Why? Why couldn't she have just said, 'Okay, we'll give it a shot'? As she brushed away tears, taking deep breaths to reopen her blocked throat, she knew why, she knew the answer to her question – it was the same one she'd found all those years ago. It hadn't been Emily's age – just seventeen – or the fact that she had so much ahead of her, school, the chance to go on in tertiary education, to meet a decent young man… it was just one thing – and for that one thing, she couldn't help but feel the most guilty – that damn anomaly! The anomaly which her sons had had – which had been the catalyst for the Center to steal her sons from her and her husband, from their warm and loving family. The anomaly which she'd had no choice but to believe in the strong possibility that the infant had inherited from his mother. To keep him safe. To keep her grandson safe. Her daughter safe. From what she'd felt when her sons had been taken from her.

The anomaly that she had discovered!

And yet, she'd had no right! No right to make that choice for her daughter. She'd only been keeping herself safe – again. From the same old heartache. The heartache that might have been avoided if she'd just looked beyond the immediate, beyond herself, and listened to Raines's words. If she hadn't wanted it all for herself, she might have saved him, too.

To think, now, what had become of them all.

She wondered, sometimes, if he hadn't taken it out on Kyle so much because of her refusal to listen to him all those years ago, when they'd both worked for the Center, when she should have listened to him because he'd been her _superior_!

She laughed, through her tears. Was that what it was about, was that what it all came back to? Someone's stupid, childish power games! Winning! How disgusting people could truly be sometimes!

Finally, she reached the cabin and walked up onto the grass and stopped at the door to take out her key, warm from her pocket. Her hands were like ice, and her face felt no better. She wiped her tears away with a sleeve quickly, but wondered if all she'd really achieved was to smear them across her cheeks more, and slid the key into the lock, turning it to open the door.

Inside the cabin, it was warmer. She let herself absorb the warmth for a moment before moving, her shoes sounding loudly on the linoleum floor, to turn up the heating.

* * *

They'd gone out to eat, at a diner they'd seen nestled beside the road on the way into town, and, after a coffee, Margaret had taken a walk outside to the telephone box to call Jarod and let him know they were all alright, and maybe ask him how he was. Sometimes, she wondered if he got annoyed by such questions: all she ever seemed to ask, over and over, was _Are you alright? How are you? Are you okay?_

Emily and Harmony had stayed inside to wait for the food to arrive, and Margaret tucked her hands into her pockets to search for the coins she'd taken out of her purse inside the diner so that she wouldn't have to do so when she got to the phone.

As she walked, she felt the coins with her fingers, deciding which was which without looking at them. The phone box was a little way from the diner restaurant, over near the larger parking area where trucks pulled up, and she found she wanted to get there as quickly as possible, as though if she got to the phone sooner everything would be alright.

_What a silly thought_, she chided herself, as her shoes crunched across the cold ground, and it was, really – silly. Getting to the phone sooner would make no difference, at all, she supposed, unless Jarod was hiding from the Center in close proximity and then, if she rang sooner, they might hear his cell phone ringing and know he was there; though she knew that he'd have set it to 'silent' mode, so there'd be no problems there. He probably always kept his phone on 'silent.'

"Margaret?"

Margaret froze at the sound of her name being called just loudly enough for her to hear it over the wind that had come up; it was a man's voice, and it certainly wasn't a voice she recognised. Her stomach plunged to the ground and fear rose up quickly to take its place. For a moment, she contemplated running – maybe she could lead the person away from Emily and Harmony – but then she wondered, with a stab of fear, if they'd not already caught up to them and knew that she would have to turn and see who it was.

She turned.

Her first thought was, _Sod!_ followed quickly by, _It's the middle of winter, and he's not wearing a coat! If he was mine-_ But he wasn't, and she knew she really had no cause for concern. A name – that wasn't even his real name, no less – was nothing to go on, and, if it just so happened to also have been her only grandchild's name, then what of it! She should have _hated_ him – he'd _killed_ her _son_ – but, for tonight, the feeling just wasn't there, and then, just like that, the fear fizzled away, too.

They wanted her to be afraid, and she couldn't really be bothered to keep up to the tune of their stupid, ignorant song. She wasn't an acrobat in their circus, with boundless energy and enthusiasm, not anymore.

"My," she remarked, "I must commend you, that _was_ stealthy. Don't you think a simple 'madam' might have been better served? I suppose you want to hear all about my day, or just the parts which feature Jarod, hmm? The thing is, I'm not really in a sharing mood right now. If you bought me a whiskey, however-"

Lyle cut her off, "My mother, Catherine, how is she?"

Margaret frowned, in spite of herself. Here was something she hadn't expected. So he knew, did he? Raines had told him, and he'd trusted him not to tell anyone else? "I don't know what you're on about, young man," she told him. "It's quite cold out here; have you been outside for very long?"

"Harmony," Lyle rephrased.

Margaret crossed her arms, sighing finally. "I don't know why you think I'm going to answer."

"Sydney isn't well. I need to know how she is."

"And yet, not a mention of how Ethan might be," she commented. Catherine and Sydney shared the same expression of the anomaly, the Inner Sense, which Catherine's children, Miss Parker and Ethan had both inherited from their mother. "A caring brother you are."

"I didn't ask because she's an Inner Sense Possessor," Lyle told her. "I don't see why Mirage should be affected, frankly, beyond the normal complications of his condition."

"Don't think I missed your little spot of professional detachment there, young man, with your brother's name." She smiled to let him know she wasn't buying his game. "And you expect me to believe that because Sydney's come down with a bit of a cold that Harmony's going to as well, but that Ethan will be perfectly fine? Who do you think you are?"

"They have Convergence, and it's a little bit more than 'a bit of a cold,'" Lyle replied, ignoring her last question.

"Convergence?" Margaret laughed. "And what if I said I didn't believe in Convergence?"

"Your opinion on the matter, surprisingly, makes little difference at all."

Margaret stared at him, trying to figure out yet if the feeling winding itself into a knot inside her chest was offence. "Oh, that was classy!" she snapped back.

"Need I repeat myself?" Lyle sighed. "Alright, once more, for the viewers at home: I don't care what you think; I don't care what you believe. That is the simple, honest truth, and there you have it. I just want to know how my mother is, and, before you make a face, despite not caring what you think on the subject of Convergence, I'm perfectly happy to take your word for it, in this instance."

Margaret balled her hands into fists; since she'd taken them out of her pockets, they'd turned to ice nicely. "I suppose you're the father," she said, casual as you please, and, when he frowned, she didn't even smile a bit – but she was grinning inside.

"Now you've just lost me," Lyle told her.

"His name is Lyle, too. My daughter named him that."

Lyle looked away from her, to one of the trucks, though she supposed he wasn't really seeing the truck at all.

She edged forward a step, a small step closer, "You didn't know?" This time, her voice rang with a distinctly patronising tone; _Oh, how terrible!_ "Am I right?" She darted out a hand and turned his chin so that he would look at her, but his eyes were off somewhere else. So much like Jarod's eyes when he was somewhere else, lost inside his mind, playing at thinking he was somewhere else, someone else, outside of his mind; nothing more than a disgusting little game. She felt the sudden overwhelming urge to slap him, but then, all of a sudden, something inside her said, _Hey, no, go back!_ and his earlier words hit her.

Her best friend!

Harmony!

"But she doesn't remember him!" she protested. "How can that hurt her, now?" Her words fell on deaf ears, aggravating her only further. "Look at me, will you, when I talk to you!" she yelled.

"Subconsciously, she still remembers," Lyle replied. "You've read her books, have you not?"

"Yes! And so?" Margaret scowled. "So what? You're not making any sense!" She was on the verge of reaching her hands up and taking his arms and giving him a decent shake when, suddenly, his eyes seemed to refocus and he frowned, noticing her standing in front of him, now.

"Just because she doesn't know who the man is she cares for, doesn't mean she doesn't still care for him. Their connection might have been broken before, but she mended it."

Margaret laughed bitterly, "She's not mentally ill anymore! She's not the same person! She's better now! She doesn't hear the Voices! She's not Catherine anymore – she's Harmony! She's not an ISP, or whatever you'd care to label someone like her – like she used to be!"

"I'm sorry," Lyle told her, "but that hasn't changed. She might manage it differently now, but she is still an ISP."

"You're not sorry at all, you bastard!" Margaret screamed, taking a quick step back from him in case she had the urge to hurt him.

Lyle laughed. "You have no idea!" he said. He took a deep breath, realising he might have said too much.

Margaret scowled. Oh, suddenly, she'd realised something, too. "You're upset at her for passing that onto you. You hate her for that."

Lyle frowned, shaking his head. "Shut up," he told her in an Irish accent, almost jovial, "and I'm not an ISP." He rubbed a hand on the side of his face and dropped the accent, "Just tell me how she is, okay?"

Margaret shook her head. "She's fine," she said, her tone completely calm.

"Alright, if you say so…"

Margaret watched his eyes start to turn in his head and shot out a hand to touch his wrist. "No! No don't! Stay… with me!" All of a sudden, as though she'd been punched, the thought occurred to her: what if Sydney was their father? She put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a sharp shake. "Hey, look at me?" She was taking a wild guess, but it didn't matter. "You're an Empath, aren't you? That's what you are! You're not an ISP, you're not even a Pretender! You're a bloody Empath!" She was ranting, but she didn't care. She was suddenly afraid – she didn't want to see this, whatever it was! She didn't want to have to deal with it! Or for Emily or Harmony to come looking for her and see it.

Lyle's eyes snapped back to her face and he lurched back from her, his breath hitching. He seemed undecided as to whether he wanted to cry or not, or, more likely, he didn't want to but his body had other plans.

She always hated when that happened, Margaret thought, but she was avoiding the issue. "What?" she said hoarsely. "You're… you're not seriously-!" She couldn't say the word!

Lyle shook his head and met her eyes, "Do you want some chocolates? I got them for a strange, short woman, but she didn't want them."

Margaret stared, dumbstruck. "Chocolates?" she repeated.

"Yes."

"Your girlfriend? Or someone you were hoping to be your girlfriend?"

Lyle laughed. "Short and strange! My sister! She's short and she's strange." He shook his head, "Shorter than me."

Margaret made a face at him.

"I'm not supposed to say things that might be construed as inappropriate," he confided.

"And 'short and strange' is okay?"

Lyle frowned. "I guess. It's not really sexual." He smiled. "And it's so true."

"How is she strange?"

Lyle laughed. "We're all strange!"

Margaret peered into his face, "Are you feeling alright?"

"I'm not sure," he replied. "Will you have a chocolate with me? I'm not supposed to have chocolate, but if you have one too, I'm sure they won't mind. Responsible adult present and all."

"Maybe just one," she conceded. "So is it serious? With Sydney?"

"Say so, ma'am. He's down in SNU."

The Special Needs Unit, Margaret recalled. Med Space. She smiled, "Are they Belgian?"

"Pardon?"

"The chocolates?"

"Yeh."

"Just my type." Some people were bloody bonkers, she thought. But then, what did that make her?

* * *

"Should have noticed this," she told him, choosing another chocolate from the box, "it's a very nice car."

"And expensive to maintain," Lyle told her. "Frankie has a BMW. Did you know that?"

She shook her head. "No? I don't know who Frankie is, I'm afraid." He was back to talking with an Irish accent, it reminded her of Catherine. She supposed that was what had made her think he might have been an Empath in the first place; maybe it made him feel closer to her, the mother he'd never known.

"What happened to Emily?" she asked casually. She knew her daughter had disappeared from her boarding school in Canada following a motor vehicle accident which had killed her best friend, but what had happened in between those four years that she'd disappeared and reappeared remained, to Margaret, anyone's guess. Emily had never spoken of it. Her only clue had been the baby she'd had taken away by Social Services.

"It's a secret," Lyle confided.

Margaret frowned. "You're not going to tell me?"

He shook his head. "It's up to her to tell you herself, you know."

"You were there," she fished. "Isn't there anything you can tell me? Your side of the story?"

Lyle made a face. "My sister is really funny," he told her.

She picked the chocolate box up from the seat and put it in her lap; she had a feeling that whoever had put this restriction on chocolate had been onto a good thing. "Are you diabetic?" she asked.

He nodded.

She took a last chocolate and put the lid on the box. "And your sister isn't?"

"Nooo." He shook his head.

"Because that would just be," she shook her head, "freaky!" She grinned.

"Probably," he said, with a frown.

"So how is your sister funny?"

"She says funny things," he answered.

"To cheer Sydney up?" Margaret asked.

He nodded in reply.

"And did it work?"

"Ezra laughed."

"Ezra!" Margaret smiled; she had no idea who Ezra was!

"He thought it was really funny."

Margaret patted his hand, afraid that he was going to lose it. "Do they know what it is? What's wrong?"

"Can't remember."

"I'm sorry?"

"He can't remember," Lyle repeated.

"Alzheimer's?"

Lyle nodded, "I think so."

"Are they treating it in any way?"

He shook his head. "They don't know if it's interacting with his Inner Sense or if, if they try to treat it, it'll progress faster than it already is."

"So they're not doing anything?"

He shook his head again.

"What about Healers?" she asked, trying to make her voice sound as normal as possible – nope, she wasn't at all out of her familiarity zone talking about such things. "Have they considered Healers? Could they do anything to help?"

"They won't do anything; they're worried they'll make it worse."

"And how are Michelle and Nicholas coping with all of this? Do you know?"

"I guess they're justifiably upset. It's a crappy thing to have happen to someone, let alone someone you know and care about. You know, but I think it will be harder on Jarod."

Avoiding that, Margaret asked, "And what about your sister?"

"Out of all of us, Jarod's known Sydney the longest," Lyle told her.

"But do _you_ think she'll be alright?"

"She always is," he replied. "She's strong. Like Catherine and Mira. She doesn't let anything hurt her for too long, she always comes back and says, 'No, I'm stronger than you are. You've got to stop hurting me now or I'll have to make you, and even if I don't want to cause anyone hurt – I will!'"

"Like you?"

Lyle shook his head, "I'm not like her. She's wonderful and lovely. I'm just mad. I hurt things – people – all the time. But the wrong people. I don't stop the ones I should stop, just the ones I can stop, the ones who never did anything to me, you know, like the other ones have this magical power that they get when they hurt someone that says that the person they hurt won't ever stop them, will just keep letting them."

"People like my daughter?"

"Just like your daughter," he agreed.

"Why are you talking to me?" she asked finally.

"I can never talk to anyone; I just wish I could talk to someone."

Margaret frowned. "Well, you can talk to me, hey. You can talk to me, okay?" She didn't know why she'd said that, but she didn't really feel like taking it back, either. She wished she'd been able to talk to Kyle, or that she could talk to Jarod or Mo more. She wished Emily would talk to her. "Can I take these with me?"

"Of course. Yes."

* * *

"Are _they_ from your secret admirer?"

_Tff!_ Margaret laughed. Emily's eyes were on her, waiting for her to reply. "I found them out in the phone box," she replied, remembering that she hadn't actually _been_ to the phone box. "I'm out of change," she added.

Emily dropped her face to dig around in the pocket of her cargo pants and handed her a good dozen coins. "Do I get one of those?" she asked, nodding to the chocolates.

"I don't think they're safe," Margaret replied, taking the coins.

"Go on. I'm sure they're okay."

Margaret frowned, then huffed. She handed over the box. "Don't complain to me if you feel sick later," she told her, and turned and walked away, towards the door.

"You're dinner's getting cold," Emily called after her. "Make it a quick phone call, yeah?"

Harmony frowned at the box of chocolates, and looked up into Emily's face, "They're from Blue Cove. There's a sticker on the side of the box that says, 'The Confectionary Cove, Blue Cove, Delaware.'"

Emily grinned. "Ooo, Miss Parker left them for Jarod!" she joked teasingly.

They both laughed.

* * *

**I've started reading the first two chapters of MMB's story, _Refuge_, which is about Margaret, which made me want to write something, too – but it's very AU and probably very bad. Thanks for reading!**


	2. Chapter 2

"Harmony?"

Harmony looked up from the magazine on literature which she was reading, a frown on her face. "Mmm?"

"Miss Parker's brother, Lyle, has Jarod ever talked to you about him?"

Harmony's eyes widened and she placed the magazine down in her lap. "I have the feeling Jarod doesn't like to talk about him; he… he did shoot Kyle, after all…"

Margaret nodded and sat down in a chair across the table from Harmony; Emily was still asleep in one of the bunks in the other room, so she figured now was the right time to talk, before Emily woke up and came in to join them for coffees and breakfast. "So, is it your opinion that he's a Pretender, like Jarod?"

Harmony fiddled with a corner of the front cover of her magazine. "Yeah…" she answered uncertainly.

"No! No, I think so, too," Margaret rushed to reassure her. "But… I just thought… wondered… if you thought his name meant anything… I mean, Emily named her son Lyle…"

Harmony put a hand up to her face as though for comfort, as though she could imagine it was a friend's hand and not her own, "You remember the doctor saying she'd had a child before-" at Harmony's words, the memory came rushing back to Margaret with a chill, and she nodded, wondering how she possibly could have forgotten, "-she was a girl; Emily named her Saskia. It sounds… Dutch, to me."

"Sydney's Belgian," Margaret blurted before she could stop herself. _Oh, stupid! Stupid, stupid woman!_

"What?" Harmony's confused voice asked.

Margaret shrugged, "I was thinking, and I see your point, Emily named her, so it would hardly apply to Lyle or Sydney, but isn't it possible that Sydney could be Miss Parker's father? He… well, he's got to be fairly intelligent to have been Jarod's mentor; he'd had to have been able to keep up with him."

Harmony dropped the hand from her face, back into her lap, and laughed. Her hand darted back up to cover her mouth.

Margaret frowned, visibly disturbed for a moment before she was able to will the expression from her face.

"Yes, I suppose anything's possible," Harmony replied, finally, having once more lowered her hand. Then, to Margaret's complete and utter surprise and _horror_, she said, "Cathy, she isn't dead, is she? Because I'm her. At least, I used to be her. I remember- Je- Lyle, he reminds me of… someone I figure I must have met as Catherine."

Margaret blinked rapidly and nodded, mute. She wanted to say, _I'm sorry_, but no words would come out.

"He gave you the chocolates from last night, didn't he?" Harmony asked, shaking her head slightly. "Strange, strange boy." She sighed heavily. "You must remember, that as charming or vulnerable he might try to come over to you as, that he's very, very dangerous – and he's anything but a victim!"

Margaret coughed, finally recovering her voice. "But of course he is, just like the other children," she protested weakly.

"No! No!" Harmony shook her head firmly. "He is dangerous! He isn't suffering from mental illness; he is wilfully, intentionally and maliciously dangerous, and only out for one person – himself! Listen to me! I know the type, I've met them before. They'll say anything, do anything, to get you to believe them, and then, sometime later, and the time will come, they'll stab you in the back and twist, as calm as you like."

"Harmony!" Margaret gasped. "He's your son!"

"Hmm," was all the response Harmony gave.

Margaret coughed again, "Don't you… want to…"

"No. Not anymore," Harmony replied quickly.

Margaret put a hand over her mouth and tried to resist the urge to rock. Her best friend was suddenly blindingly a stranger to her! She hurt with it all.

"You see, he's already got you under his spell," Harmony reeled off, whilst Margaret stared in dumb horror.

Finally, able to voice her fears, Margaret asked, "Is this you talking, or is it Catherine, taken by a fit of her old condition?"

Harmony laughed loudly, ecstatically and horrifically. "I was wholly prepared to believe that we shared opinions on this," she confessed.

"On our own children!" Margaret gasped. "I… I can't!"

"He's not your son, Maggie," Harmony reminded her sensibly.

Margaret stifled a small sound that rose in the back of her throat, realising that Harmony was right. He was not her son, he wasn't even her concern. But she said, "You're my best friend. You're like a sister, I love you like a sister. Your children are my children, Harmony, don't you see? You feel the same way about mine, don't you?"

Harmony said nothing; it was clear that she did. "He isn't-" she began, finding it hard to articulate exactly what she was feeling.

"What?" Margaret prompted. "Your son? Not like Missy, not like Ethan? I beg to differ. He reminds me a lot of you. You used to bottle everything up and not say a word, even when you knew you had someone you could trust with your life and anything, anything you cared to say."

Harmony stared at her in abject horror. "Don't! Don't you-! Don't you-!" But she couldn't get the words out; she'd started to shake bodily.

Margaret felt a sharp, steely shard of ice stab through her heart. Oh, God! What had she said?! The horror from Harmony's face came to share in in her own.

"He's nothing like me!" Harmony declared, leaping from her chair, her words almost nonsensical in her anger and terror. "He's a monster! Can't you see?! Can't you see why I sent him away?! Can't you see it in his eyes?!"

Margaret felt the cold, hard lump of her horror slowly uncoiling to reveal its true form. "No," she almost whimpered – she was losing her kind, loving best friend all over again – "they're like your eyes, like your daughter's eyes."

Over their heads, the light blew out with a sharp, surgical Ping! and Margaret clamped a hand tight over her mouth in terror. _Don't scream! Don't scream! Don't scream!_ she repeated to herself over and over in her mind, to the eerie sound of her own whimpering, which, in fact, was coming from behind the hand tightly clasped over her mouth. She felt tears prickle her eyes, and then, just like that, Harmony's eyes filled with the weight of a waterfall and tears came rushing out of her eyes.

She fell to the floor and hugged her knees, sobbing. She didn't want to be that awful person! Oh, God, she didn't want to be mad again!

Finally, it wasn't Margaret who rushed to her side with comforting arms and soothing words, but Emily, woken from sleep and with her hair still messy and tangled.

* * *

Wiping her nose with the back of her hand, Margaret stood on shaky legs and fled from the cabin and its warmth, from her daughter's soothing words – directed at her friend, not at her – and out into the horrible cold of the winter morning.

Her eyes streamed with tears as she ran, freezing her cheeks completely, but she didn't care; she ran until she reached the toilet block and locked herself into one of the cubicles in the women's.

Half an hour later, shaking still and near frozen, she ventured out of the cubicle and almost tripped headlong over the small child standing spot on outside the cubicle door, and screamed, lurching to the side to avoid stepping on the child. Regaining her balance, somewhat, she managed not to fall and spun back around, only to find herself faced with someone quite a bit older than the small child of perhaps three or four, and very definitely not a female.

"She won't hurt you," the boy told her plainly. "She cares for you deeply. I'm sorry, I apologise for startling you. I was unsure as to when you would be making a reappearance from the confi-" He frowned and stopped talking. "Are you unharmed?" he finally asked.

Margaret nodded, confused. "H-!"

Bobby bit his lip. "You won't tell my brother, will you? He'd worry terribly. He does that, worries about me. Don't tell him. Please. He'll be upset; we haven't spoken in quite a many years. I think he thinks, I'm just waiting for us to die, for it all to be over. I don't-"

"You don't know if you are?" Margaret filled in for him, finally understanding who he was. His 'brother' was an Empath, making him, she was certain, a psychic projection from one mind to another.

Bobby blinked, staring at the floor with wide, offended eyes, and straightened. "No. No, I'm not," he replied. "I'm… No! I have decided-!" He fell short and finally looked up into her face, "It's my turn to be a brother back. He's looked after us all for all of these years, kept us relatively safe-"

"All of us?" Margaret cut him off.

Bobby rolled his eyes. "You haven't met Teddy. I think he's funny, but I don't think he really is. I think you'd probably want to run away from him in the opposite direction as fast as you could if you ever met, or find a gun, really fast. Quick smart!"

Margaret shook her head. "Teddy?" she repeated vaguely.

Bobby nodded with wide eyes.

"Seems like a cheery fellow."

Bobby laughed shortly and put a hand over his mouth. "No, not really," he replied, when he'd put his hand down.

"Is there a reason you're here?" Margaret asked, at length.

Bobby shrugged and looked to the left, staring at the wall absently. "Just getting away for a while, I guess," he said plainly.

"How's Sydney?" she asked. A split second later, she'd covered her ears with her hand when she was met with a horrible, high pitched something which she supposed might have been a shriek but might as easily have been, alternatively, a squeal.

Bobby stared at her as though she'd maybe just cast a witch's spell on him to kill him, then, just like that, the look was gone, and his expression was just… blank.

"I'm sorry," she breathed, lowering her hands. She supposed that answered her question, in part at least: to Bobby's mind, Sydney was his father. Any questions about him only felt like rubbing it in what he was going through, and the eventual outcome of it.

As she watched, Bobby lurched forward suddenly and she found herself back sharply from his reach, then come up against the taps. She stared at Bobby's wide eyes in horror, and realised that he was holding onto her sleeve. "My brother can make it better!" he told her. "You have to make him make it better!"

She shook her head, uncomprehending, and flinched when Bobby brought a hand up to touch her face with a grubby hand, and then, then – she'd forgotten about the grubbiness of his hand, the chewed fingernails – she was seeing things, fragments, shards from another life, someone else's life, someone who was, was… Kyle!

She screamed.

Bobby retreated sharply from the sound and put his hands over his ears to try to block it out and, finally, Margaret realised that the images, the feelings that weren't her own, had stopped, died, and somehow, it felt like her son – her Kyle – dying all over again, but with one thing sharply in the front of her mind.

Kyle was alive!

Somehow!

"How?" she breathed.

"He did it," Bobby whispered, starting to hunch over as though against the screaming that no longer could be heard.

She laughed, erratically, unbelievingly. "Kyle… can't… be ali… ve!" she sobbed, suddenly shaking. "His… heart… was do… nated!"  
Bobby stared at her in all seriousness and whispered back, "Tell that to my brother."

Margaret laughed again, but even the effort to place a hand over her mouth to stifle the mad giggles was too much. "It's not true!"

Bobby chewed on his finger, staring at her, "He liked Kyle."

Margaret's mind couldn't take it in. She focussed on something else, anything else, instead. "Is that blood?" she asked, of the dark muck on his hands.

"Jimmy's," Bobby told her as though, strangely, she was a friend, but, really, it wasn't much of a deal.

She shivered.

"Jimmy's dead," Bobby informed her, as though sharing news at Show-and-Tell. His eyes rolled a bit and he looked at a spot high on the wall. "Damn it! I forgot-!" He giggled.

Margaret felt the unnerving feeling sizzling through her veins, engulfing her whole body. "What did you forget?" she asked, whisper-quiet.

"I forgot to say, 'Goodbye,'" Bobby told her, annoyed with himself. He frowned. "Dumb, stupid Bobby! Rrr! You're so stupid! Jimmy's gonna be mad, now! He's our friend, loser!"

Margaret waved her hand about in front of her to draw his attention. "Jimmy's been dead for a long, long time, sweetheart," she told him gently.

"I know," Bobby replied brightly. "I just forgot I forgot. So annoying!"

"Kyle's alive?" Margaret ventured, tentatively stepping away from the taps.

"Uh-huh," Bobby nodded, looking at the wall again. He laughed and looked at her suddenly. "Do you think Tazu likes Jimmy?" he asked abruptly. "They're almost the same age."

Margaret stared. She shook her head slowly.

"Yes." He nodded, then pointed to the door. "Yes. Emily's worried. She's waiting for you to come back so she'll know you're alright. Go. You should… go. Worrying isn't… nice. It… sucks!"

"Y-yes, I think I'll do that," Margaret agreed.

"That would be really weird," Bobby said, maybe to her, maybe to himself.

"If Jimmy liked Tazu?" Margaret asked, before she could stop herself. _Damn it!_

"I wouldn't be mad," Bobby told her.

She shook her head; of course not.

"It would be nice, for both of them."

She nodded.

"Do you think he's dead?"

She frowned.

"But, like, really dead?" Bobby rephrased.

"I don't know," she told him, feeling at a loss for words.

"Lyle thinks Dorothy did it. Like she's all scary and evil, or something," he filled her in.

She nodded. "Dorothy. Yeah."

Bobby frowned and looked at her, staring.

"No. I mean. Dorothy. Yeah. I know who you're talking about. Your-your aunt, yeah?"

Bobby nodded, "Yessir, madam!"

She nodded, too. Now what did she say? "So, ah, Emily's waiting."

"Waiting, yes," Bobby agreed.

"And-? And-? What? You'll just-?"

Bobby smiled and twitched his nose. "Do you believe in flying br'msticks?"

Margaret shook her head emphatically and turned away, toward the door, "Oh, no!" she assured him. She reached for the handle and swung the door open, letting in a gust of icy cold air from outside, reminding her of how cold she was. When she looked back, Bobby was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

"Broomsticks!" she muttered as she trudged back to the cabin. "Somebody's been watching too much _Bewitched_! By goodness!"

She stopped at the edge of the road to let a car pass and went on, thinking about Kyle! Her beautiful Kyle!

Was there any way he could be alive! Could it possibly be true! Her heart hurt to think so, and yet, it hurt not to think so!

It couldn't turn out now that it wasn't true! It would be horribly, horribly unfair!

* * *

**No, I wasn't watching too much _Bewitched_, but I need to get some sleep.**


End file.
